urse, the necessary consequence of the other. In
the interest of the Church as much as in the credulity of the
people must be sought the main cause of so violent an epidemic,
of so fearful a phenomenon in its continuance and atrocities, a
fact demonstrated by the whole course of the superstition in the
old times of Catholicism. Materials for exciting animosity and
indignation against suspected heretics were near at hand. In
the assurance of the pre-scientific world everything remote
from ordinary knowledge or experience was inseparable from
supernaturalism. What surpassed the limits of a very feeble
understanding, what was beyond the commonest experience of
every-day life, was with one accord relegated to the domain of
the supernatural, or rather to that of the devil. For what was
not done or taught by Holy Church must be of 'that wicked
One'--the cunning imitator.

In the twelfth century the Church was alarmed by the simultaneous
springing up of various sects, which, if too hastily claimed by
Protestantism as _Protestants_, in the modern sense, against
Catholic theology, were yet sufficiently hostile or dangerous to
engage the attention and to provoke the enmity of the pontiffs.
The fate of the Stedingers and others in Germany, of the
Paulicians in Northern France; of the Albigenses and Waldenses in
Southern Europe, is in accordance with this successful sort of
theological tactics. Many of the articles of indictment against
those outlaws of the Church and of society are extracted from the
primitive heresies, in particular from the doctrines of the
anti-Judaic and _spiritualising_ Gnostics, and their more than
fifty subdivided sects--Marcionites, Manicheans, &c. Gregory IV.
issued a bull in 1232 against the Stedingers, revolted from the
rule of the Archbishop of Bremen, where they are declared to be
accustomed to scorn the sacraments, hold communion with devils,
make representative images of wax, and consult with witches.[64]

[64] A second bull enters into details. On the reception of
a convert, a toad made its appearance, which was adored by
the assembled crowd. On sitting down to the banquet a black
cat comes upon the stage, double the size of an ordinary
dog, advancing backwards with up-turned tail. The neophytes,
one after another, kissed this feline demon, with due
solemnity, on the back. Walter Mapes has given an account of
the similar ceremonies of the _Publicans_ (Paulicians).
Heretical w